Xojo license

[samRowlands]

@Cenobyte

Trying to cross code for Mac and Windows and portable systems is a tough job any way you try that. Screen sizes are completely different, it’s touch screen versus mouse operated, so any change of developing an app for desktop and tablet is stupid any way you look at it.

Declarative UI is the solution.

[TomasJ]

all these desktop vs. touch and screen size problems have been solved long time ago with responsive Web UIs and controls. And Macs and GTK4 are in these aspects much more advanced than Windows with its UI legacy crap. I’ve once made a screenshot horror-picture gallery back in time.

[anic297]

@npalardy

What parameter type can you use thats agnostic across ALL projects?
You cant use “Button”, or DesktopUI Control or … as that would limit it to Desktop
The answer is

1. you dont or
2. you use variant
3. a really elaborate setup that really shouldnt be necessary *(I’ll explain below)
   And neither is good
   Why?
   In the first case it makes the idea of “shared code” useless
   In the second its even more subtle because VARIANT make the compiler not give a damn about what you pass in
   So if you pass a dictionary instead of a button the compiler is fine with that
   Or pass a listbox
   Again the compiler is OK with that

Why not just passing an enum and avoid relying on the caption of the button altogether?

[npalardy]

you’ve completely missed the point

@npalardy

Suppose in Xojo you want to have some “common code” across all project types that handles some specific action in a button baed on its label (yes this will be slightly contrived but it illustrates the issue)

maybe I need to rely on some property of the control - its size maybe

I cant pass the control instance because of everything I’ve said

[anic297]

I meant it’s clearly doable to share code between platforms (using enums, for example) and set the button’s caption based on the enum (i.e. the other way around).

Yes, there are limitations like you’re saying, but they don’t prevent completely to share code.

[npalardy]

sure if you narrow the use case way down then it can be done

but even just trying to set left right top & bottom - all simple integers CANT be done except how I outlined because you cant pass a generic “button”

that illustrates what mess they’ve created by using the prefixed namespaces with NO common abstract supers

Controls are only one part of the entire problem but illustrative of the issue

They’ve made it harder, not easier, to share code

And libraries dont solve this problem

[anic297]

Right. I agree with this point.

[Torsten_B]

Xojo still does not support generics, right?

[npalardy]

No they dont

[bkeeney]

I doubt they ever will.

[npalardy]

Generics requires a huge investment of time & effort that I doubt they’d do because dear leader wouldnt understand the benefits overall

I mean why else would you get a feature request like

https://tracker.xojo.com/xojoinc/xojo/-/issues/57368

[Goeffie]

@bkeeney

Did you at least get an email saying that you’d be charged on such and such date? That would be the honorable thing to do. But, I’m guessing not.

That’s how auto renew work. They never just debit. They do send a mail first. Unless, that changed.

[thorstenstueker]

I was exploring the mails of the years we used Xojo here. Nothing found.

[Torsten_B]

That’s an enormous technical debt.

Generics avoid tons of boilerplate code.

[thorstenstueker]

Use them in the languages which support them. Xojo is not

[npalardy]

indeed
Try explaining that to Geoff

ESP since so much of the framework, compiler, etc is done in C++ with its extensive templates

but its “too computer science-y”

[thorstenstueker]

It makes no difference. They have passed by many capabilities the system could have with low workloads. Why should they? No Idea. Cause Geoff does the things he by self understands immediately. Not the ones which a programmer by heart wants to have realized in the envoronment he uses. We may have some different views compared to Geoff Perlman. But at the end: he decides which way it takes. We have no real influence to it. Even when you worked at XoJo, inc there was non. The decision to handle stuffs like he handles them is his personal one. He as the CEO has the damned right to do that. We have to accept or to go. So far so good.

He could also have a much better mobile App. There was a big chance while he has learned how to build iOS GUI and how to build Android native GUI. He could have done a merger to get to single mobile project with all capabilities and native GUIS using Kotlin Multiplatform. I have no Idea why he was not realizing that deep hanging fruit. But: he decided that Android is Android-Kotlin and that’s it. With this methodical way a single mobile project with all of the needed capabilities is so far away. Something you need to realize: possible and goos idea.

This described there is no real chance for getting him to another direction. As the change between Web 1 and Web 2 would have be possible when investing more time. Time they did not had. This stuffs are always the same. Android had also to be out as fast as possible. The promises before: forgotten.

So everybody has to decie for himself if he really wants to have stuffs like this. I don’t want to. you don’t want to. But he wants to have it like he beliebes it is the best. We will live with this.

Xojo has lost many developers and it is a niche solution. There was never a userbase counted in millions of users. It was always smaller. And it ha never the chance to. Cause it was never as functional as C++, Java, C#. And that’s it. here it ends up cause the story has a second problem. With a small userbase you can’t build up everything you may want to. You can build always only a little bit of the possible. That’s what XoJo is doing.

[TomasJ]

@thorstenstueker

That’s what XoJo is doing.

was… was doing…

[thorstenstueker]

Na, ThomasJ they still loose Users and so on.

[bkeeney]

Used to be that when a new release came out there would be a flood of questions on the forums on how to do things (or lamenting that why’d they release a feature that clearly doesn’t work as intended). Not much activity this week on the forum and I doubt that has anything to do with better documentation and example projects. Xojo IS losing their audience and it’s showing in their forum activity and consulting requests. Add in AI tools to go to free/cheaper IDE’s and languages and you’ve got a perfect storm for mass exodus.